Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic



  By Jean Lowe Carlson

  The Kingsmen Chronicles, Book One

  Copyright 2016 Jean Lowe Carlson

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright 2017 Jean Lowe Carlson. All Rights Reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ISBN 978-1-943199-20-4

  Cover Design: Copyright 2017 by Yocla Designs. All Rights Reserved.

  Maps: Copyright 2016 Jean Lowe Carlson, edited Matt Carlson. All Rights Reserved.

  Chapter Graphics: “Typo Backgrounds” font by Manfred Klein: https://manfred-klein.ina-mar.com/ https://www.dafont.com/typobackgrounds.font?l[]=10&l[]=1. Free Commercial Use.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To everyone who made this labor of love come true, you rock! Special thanks to Ben Rayack for helping craft languages and their grammar, to Anders Reis von Crooks for his dedicated proofreading and marketing ideas, and to Susanne Lakin for her wonderful critiquing on characters and flow. Many thanks to Carrie Petersen and Michelle Graden for their early-draft critiques, vast encouragement, and great suggestions. Love to my family Wendy, Steph, and Dave for their continued support, as well as my grandparents. Thanks to my friends Josh and Lela, Sam and Ben, and Anders and Nadine for letting me talk their ear off about fantasy books! Love to Amber, for letting me know that creativity is absolutely worth it.

  But most of all, thanks to my incredible husband Matt Carlson. I honestly could not have done this without all your plot twists, fight scene suggestions, mapmaking abilities, heaps of encouragement, and so much more! You make my life worth it in every way, baby!

  Join Jean Lowe Carlson’s New Releases newsletter and get a free book bundle, including Blackmark, The Kingsmen Chronicles Book 1. Click here to get started: https://jeanlowecarlson.com/promo1ef/

  OTHER WORKS BY JEAN LOWE CARLSON

  The Kingsmen Chronicles

  Blackmark

  Bloodmark

  Goldenmark (Winter 2017!)

  Three Days of Oblenite

  Breath

  Tears

  Blood

  Short Fiction

  The Man in White

  The Family

  The Grasses of Hazma-Din

  PROLOGUE – ELOHL

  Black cowl raised against the windswept silence of the city, Elohl den’Alrahel darted through the night. Supple doeskin boots whispered over cobblestones as he doubled his pace, slipping through the darkness towards his quarry. Choked alleys loomed around him, hushed streets in the King's City of Lintesh. The plaque of an alehouse creaked in a wind already freshened with the snowmelt scents of impending dawn. The rim of the sky to the east had begun to lighten, violet now against glacier-shrouded mountains.

  Elohl's stomach clenched in a bilious knot. The sound of his own heart filled the velvet night. Dawn was coming. He was running out of time. His people were running out of time.

  He moved on, faster, silent.

  Blending into the mute shadows of the unfamiliar city, he absorbed every nuance of the night. Scents of piss-pot and jasoune bloom marked a whorehouse. The rhythmic banging of an unlatched shutter spoke of a home abandoned. Anticipating touch with the senses that were his strange birthright and his alone, textures and solidity of objects formed a ghostly picture in a vast sphere around him, a spectral imprint of the city overshadowed by the embrace of the mountains. Without conscious thought, Elohl dodged an upturned barrel by a tingle to his feet, avoided a low roofline in the charcoal blackness by a pressure near his face.

  A looming void at the end of the alley grew now before him, a sensational picture of towering stone, his destination at last. Cautiously, Elohl approached, heart racing as he spread his senses wider, fearful of being caught by Palace Guard. The outer palace wall coalesced before him, until he could hardly stand its burgeoning pressure. At last, his bare fingertips touched that inky darkness. And just as his sister Olea had told him, Roushenn Palace's roughened wall had been hacked straight out of the southern face of the Kingsmount itself, leaving plenty of holds to climb.

  Every block of Lintesh's blue byrunstone granite was coarse, Elohl had found tonight, carved by wind and rain, snow and ice. Elegance had no place here, not like Elohl's home in the Court of Alrashesh, hundreds of leagues away. Not like the Kingsmen's graceful masonry, their carvings depicting both battle and thoughtfulness, values they held back to the founding of Alrou-Mendera.

  A way of life that would soon be lost if his mission tonight went awry.

  Elohl dug into holds in the granite by the same instinct that allowed him effortless grace in the darkness. The pitch-smeared tips of his boots found purchase, and he was climbing. His fingertips tingled suddenly, as an image of cracked bones lanced his consciousness. Without pause, Elohl passed that hold by, grasping a solid one instead. His foot throbbed as he stepped to a miniscule lip, sensations of falling urging him towards a different ledge, one strong enough to support his weight and push upwards. The textures of the byrunstone yielded their secrets until he was soon up and over three stories with ease. Sensing no disturbance of sentries, Elohl dropped the last two feet, landing in the vegetation on the inside of the wall. Drowned in the night-whisper of ferns, he slipped fast through the swallowing hush of the palace gardens, following the wall.

  The stone arch of the gardener’s entrance to the palace proper was soon found, again just as Olea had said. Sliding into the arch's shadows, Elohl removed Elsthemi-steel picks from a pouch in his leathers. His touch was softer than featherwisp as he eased his tension tool and pick into the door's simple iron pin-lock. A jiggle here, the right angle there, he was nearly done when one of the ancient tumblers suddenly stuck.

  Sound startled him as a pair of Palace Guardsmen crunched close upon the gravel walk out in the garden, only ten lengths away. Elohl froze, deep in the swaddling shadows of the doorway, chest clenched, fear lancing his gut. Discovery would mean an inquiry, a few nights in the dungeons for the crime of invading the King's labyrinthine fortress. And though Elohl was no thief, any delay tonight would mean his people's demise.

  Without torches to mar their vision, the eyes of the guards swept the darkness, adjusted to the black and ready for intruders. But Elohl’s charcoal-black garb was meant for the night.

  The guards passed on.

  The lock clicked.

  Elohl sighed in through the door, a moving shroud, though his insides were strung tight as tripwire. Torches guttered in iron sconces, licked by ghastly currents in the hall. His rushed breath echoed in the cavernous silence. Vaulted gables absorbed the sound and eased it back in whispers. Sweat slicked his short ruff of blue-black hair. His hands trembled as if the night wind blew through him rather than sighed through the ironbound door behind him. His nerves were besting him, even though he'd anticipated this.

  Inhaling deeply, he breathed one slow, measured breath, just as he had been trained. One breath, sending steadiness into his hands, controlling his emotions. Only his success tonight could
undo the vile summons that his people, the Alrashemni Kingsmen, had received just three days ago in Alrashesh. A summons that demanded each and every Kingsman re-swear fealty at Roushenn Palace or be charged with high treason for unspecified crimes. High Treason. A death sentence.

  In a few short hours, the Kingsmen would arrive here en masse, clad for battle to show their outrage at the unfounded accusation. They would stand in the throne room and demand explanation from King Uhlas den'Ildrian, who had issued the decree for reasons unknown to any of Elohl's kin, nor their allies among the nobility. An unprecedented edict of a secretive King known to keep his own counsel and trust few, though he had heretofore trusted the Kingsmen his entire reign, even having two dedicated to his person at all times.

  Men and women who had sworn undying loyalty to the royal line of Alrou-Mendera for centuries. Who were the strength and heart of the nation, elite warriors and peacekeepers and negotiators for the King himself.

  Charged with treason.

  It was insanity.

  And though Elohl was still the least of their number, a Seventh Seal with his training to be full Kingsman unfinished by a year yet, he moved down the echoing byrunstone hall, anger steadying his purpose. Two rights and a left, down a servant's corkscrewing stair and then another, he twisted through the mazelike bowels of the palace. Burrowed out of the mountain, these corridors had been orchestrated to hopelessly confuse invaders, and it was this part of his task that Olea had quizzed him on. Turning corner after corner, he raced down passages and grand halls all muted in torch-lit shadows, slipping into niches to hide from the heavy boot-falls of approaching guards.

  He tried not to think about what would happen if his people arrived here in a few hours, clad for war. If there was some secret the King held for which he foolishly wanted his peacekeepers arrested, annihilated. If he gave order to his Palace Guard to see it done.

  Battle. Bloodshed. Death.

  Finding his objective at last, Elohl halted before a pair of massive ironwood doors deep inside the mountain. Looking up at their height, he took in the imposing tableaux carven upon the doors, picking out the scene by the uncertain flickers of a nearby torch. A snarling wolf and roaring dragon curled around each other, locked forever in battle and ringed in flame. Stylized with hackles raised, the wolf's fangs were sunk into the dragon's neck, while the ornate, serpentine dragon had the wolf's belly in its talons. But though both tore at each other, the tableaux's circle was perfectly balanced, as if neither were actually winning.

  Elohl had a moment of silence, his fears stilled in awe. No one really knew what the tableaux of wolf and dragon signified, nor why certain places in Alrou-Mendera were inscribed with this image and others had it not. An ancient sigil from before the Kingsmen's time, it was not present at the Court of Alrashesh. And like many ancient mysteries in their nation, leftover from peoples long lost, its origins were much speculated upon, but overall unknown.

  After a moment, Elohl roused himself, back to his task. Lingering any place too long tonight was unwise. Setting his attention to the lock, the chill ironwood of the Deephouse clicked open to his picks, revealing a looming black maw of natural stone behind the doors. A taproom for servants and guards, Elohl's nostrils caught the acrid spice of hopt-ale and the syrupy pumpkin of mellon-blume wine as he stepped soundlessly inside.

  But the seeping darkness of the cavern wasn't as thick as he'd expected. Setting his back against a spectral stand of kegs, he peered around it towards the byrunstone bar. The hushed glow of a lantern confirmed his suspicions.

  Someone else was here, and they shouldn’t have been, not this late.

  Uncertainty filled him, and Elohl froze in the darkness. But deep within, fierce determination took him. Tonight, he would succeed for his people. If he failed, this might be the last dawn for his father, his mother.

  All their kin.

  Senses tingling, Elohl edged forward along the shadowy kegs. Four figures stood around a lantern upon the polished bar, surrounded by the yawning void. Heads down, the cowled four conversed in low murmurs, their ragtag leathers roughshod in the way of thieves or mercenaries. The edge of a knife caught the light as one gestured at a vellum spread upon the bar, a torn-edged schematic of a vast structure.

  Elohl cursed internally. The highwall in the furthest depths of the cavern, his destination, could be accessed only by the vaulted natural arch behind the bar. Which was blocked by the nighttime agitators. To get to the arch, he had to maneuver right past those gathered around the lantern. Edging forward out of the deepest shadows of the barrels, Elohl kept low. Just out of the lantern's luminescence, he crept towards a dark spot near the start of the arch.

  “Ho, there! Halt!”

  A war-roughened voice ripped the darkness. Elohl froze, just out of the light, the thunder of his pulse filling his ears. Heads turned, faces scowled. The burly man behind the bar cursed and drew a knife in a rush, as a slender weasel of a fellow hurried to roll up the vellum. A weather-chapped man half-pulled a sword. But the titter of a woman came suddenly, and the others paused. Blonde hair shone dully from beneath her thieves’ hood as her curvaceous leather-buckled figure rounded the bar.

  “Yurgas! You've scared the poor Penitent half to death!” The blonde quipped. The dry-sour scent of cider reeked from her as she sidled close, her cloying perfume stronger than any true jasoune bloom could ever produce by the dead of midnight. Breasts heaved above her tight thieves' corset with its many pockets, as she uncowled Elohl and put a soft black glove to his face, her half-smile lecherous in the sallow lamplight.

  “So young for a Penitent!” Her blue eyes glimmered as she considered him. Her hand slid down his neck, stroking his jerkin's high-buckled collar. “You’re built like a heron! So slender and tall. And with such lovely dark curls and storm grey eyes...What a waste in a Jenner!”

  Elohl blinked, realizing her mistake, that she thought he was of the priesthood. The Jenner Penitents who brewed the concoctions filling the kegs of the alehouse. He adopted the ruse, placing one foot behind the other and dropping into a moderate bow, two fingers to his lips in the manner of a Jenner, which he had seen when they made deliveries to Alrashesh.

  “My Lords. My Lady. Blessings be upon you in this late hour.”

  He felt the nighttime agitators ease somewhat, believing him. But if they had ever truly looked at a Penitent, they would have known that the young man before them wore no Penitent's robe. Elohl's long charcoal-black leather jerkin was quadrant-split for fighting, with blackened steel buckles etched with the sigil of Kingsmount and Stars. His cowl was oiled leather rather than cloth, and flowed seamlessly into his jerkin to keep off rain.

  And even though he'd not worn his sword across his back tonight, only dual longknives at his belt, to politicos and the elite it would have been unmistakable garb, the trappings of an Alrashemni Kingsman. But Kingsmen were a rare sight in the city, coming and going only on errands of negotiation and peacekeeping for King Uhlas, and often at night. And they were rare enough across the rest of the nation that the sighting of one happened not at all in some people's lifetime. And so these brigands believed as they wanted to believe, and saw a Penitent walking his doctrinal Mercy in the early morning hours.

  “Here lad.” The swarthy man behind the bar growled. “Have a pull and go. Bar’s closed.”

  A thick glass tumbler slid across the polished blue stone, straight to Elohl’s bare fingertips. His nostrils caught the same dry-sour tang of cider from the blonde's breath. His best option now was to play the ruse that the thieves had duped themselves with.

  Adopting feigned guilt, Elohl gave a nervous laugh and picked up the tumbler. “Just a taste.” He murmured, like a young Penitent might if discovered coming down for a forbidden drink in the dead of night.

  “Not so pure after all!” The woman laughed, lifting her hand to his, urging the tumbler to his lips. “Have a sip.”

  Elohl gazed at the amber liquid reflecting the wan lamplight. He wonde
red if it would be his last drink this side of Aeon's oblivion. Or if it was to be a mourning for his kin who might see oblivion upon the morrow. Either way, a drink would ease his nerves. Elohl lifted it to his lips, then tossed it back. He clapped the thick tumbler to the bar with a grimace. Merry jeers greeted his buzzing ears as he fought to not cough from the fumes screaming up his throat.

  “Three whole pulls! He drinks like the High Brigade do!” The man behind the bar gave a rasping chuckle.

  “Jenner can keep his liquor!” The weasely fellow who had rolled up the vellum sneered.

  “Ain’t no Jenner.” The same battle-rough voice from the darkness that had noticed him initially spoke for the second time.

  The place in Elohl's gullet where the cider had passed in liquid flame now cooled in terror. His ruse was forfeit. His gaze flicked to the deepest shadows, to the man who had marked him. Elohl’s skin tingled, telling him to run, feeling the man's penetrating gaze searing like molten glass. The uncaring viciousness of a predator in the darkness, with the uncompromising readiness of a war commander. Commanders defected sometimes, from the brutality of the Valenghian front, using their honed killing skills for nefarious purpose.

  Elohl fought his panic and the resulting urge to flee, forcing himself to find the man in the shadows. As the mercenary stood, Elohl pinned him with a chill gaze, stern as any his father had given men who had yet to learn they were outmatched against a Kingsman. The man hesitated. But Elohl was young, and though he had his father’s strong, sinewed build, he was still only a Seventh Seal, untested, unfinished. He hadn’t lived his father’s life. He hadn't the experience of commanding men to war. He hadn't matched his skills against a hundred enemies, nor even one outside the training grounds.

  Uncertainty filled him. The mercenary-commander saw it, and Elohl felt his hesitation break. He stalked into the lantern light, that bear-thick bulk tensed for violence, roped scars upon his left cheek twisting into a malicious snarl.

  “If he's a Jenner,” the man growled, “he won't fight me. If he's a Kingsman, he will.”

  “Now, Yurgas!” The woman's gaze flicked uncertainly between Elohl and the big mercenary. “The lad couldn’t be a Kingsman!”

  “Oh, he’s a Kingsman. Young, but mark me.” The brute's blue eyes were cold iron. “See that pride in his gaze. That ramrod spine. Pride and training. And Kingsman blacks, true as true, even tooled with the right sigils.”

  “They's on to us?” The skinny fellow rasped. “You said they got no clue what's in for 'em tomorrow! You said we do it all quiet! Tomorrow night, stealthy, just like we was told by...”

  “Still your tongue or lose it!” Their commander barked.

  “I only thought...” The weasel-faced man countered.

  “You didn't think.” The commander grated. “So shut your hole. This one's barely of age. Twenty, ain't you boy? Just shy of your blackmark. Oh, you look the part, but you feel... scared.” A cruel smile twisted the fellow's scarred lip. “Pissing yourself. And where are your fellows? Where would they be, if your kin knew you were here, in a devil's lair, listening to privileged information? They'd be here. Real Kingsmen would be carving out our hearts right now. But you're alone. They don't know what's in store for them tomorrow, do they? All those networks they have, all those hidden spies for the King. And so they come unprepared, and your presence here is mere happenstance...”

  Coiled readiness suddenly snapped as the mercenary lunged, a dagger in his thick hand. Elohl slipped sideways, the slash slicing only air near his neck. He launched to the byrunstone arch behind the bar, finding ancient iron fittings perfect for his fingertips. Guided by sensation, Elohl scurried up, climbing fast. The commander's words tumbled through him, slurrying his veins with ice even as he climbed.

  They knew what was going to happen tomorrow.

  Something quiet. Something terrible.

  “Get him, dammit!” The commander rasped below. “The Kingsman's seen the plans! The Lothren will send us all to Halsos if tomorrow's events play wrong because of a single lad!”

  The marauders cursed in the palace's ancient bowels. A tingle of instinct rippled through Elohl, a premonition of pain like flesh pierced by steel. He dropped his right hand from the arch, just before a thrown knife clattered against stone where his hand had been. Regaining his grip, he moved upwards again like the eloi lizards for which he was named. More knives went whirring upwards and Elohl dodged them. Below, two mercenaries began climbing, their clumsy scrabbling peppered liberally with grunts and expletive oaths.

  As he angled up and over the stone bridge to the highwall, horror carved out Elohl's gut, that he had missed unanticipated information about what was in store for the Kingsmen. He cursed himself for not looking at the schema upon the bar. For not concentrating on the mercenaries' conversation. For having been too absorbed in his fear and his mission to have heard plans that no doubt would seal the fate of his kin this day.

  Far below, sparks of fire caught his attention. Elohl scrabbled faster, realizing what was about to happen.

  “Heave!” He heard down below. “Hit him, dammit!”

  With roars of glee, liquor-bottles with spouts of flame went whizzing through the air. Smashing upon the stone, flaming spirits doused the wall to his right, then just below. Gouts of flame surged over the wall, smoke charred his nose. Another bottle smashed to his left, geysering flame. Corralled by fire, his only option was up, and fast. Another bottle came, smashing below his foot, flames missing him by only a hand span. Elohl climbed hard, pumping his lungs like bellows to get enough air, though smoke choked him now. Another bottle smashed, but down by the others. He was above their throws. But if he didn’t hurry, the smoke would asphyxiate him, and fast.

  The item he’d come for was still here. Elohl's companion Ghrenna had seen it; a talisman in this cavern that had the power to save their people from whatever was coming. And though she was as young as Elohl, her visions were never wrong, and the strength of her seeings was more than rare. Look for a ring of star-metal, of a dragon fighting a wolf around a drop of blood, Ghrenna had told him three days ago, her voice hollow from the pain of her trance, in the deepest black of the cavern.

  Coughing through the smoke, Elohl opened his senses, feeling for the high inky corner where the item was supposed to be, seeing textures of rock with his body. And there, nearly at the top of the three-hundred-length climb, just below a rift that led out to the night, was the natural oval in the stone Ghrenna had described. Elohl climbed the last lengths fast, anchoring himself with fingertips and toes. Tucking his mouth and nose into his shoulder so he could breathe, he reached one hand into the gap, touching a wooden box. He fished the box to the edge. Coughing, smoke burning his eyes, Elohl snugged a fingertip under the metal clasp and flicked open the lid. His fingers touched a moth-eaten velvet lining, then a filigreed object of metal nestled in the velvet.

  He retrieved the item, squinting at it in the shifting light of the flames below. An ornate metal clockwork the size of a medallion gleamed in his palm. Layered like a puzzle, made of precious metals, it had thirteen spokes like the Jenner Sun. Elohl's gut dropped to his boots. His head reeled and his chest compressed. The box was right, just as Ghrenna had described it from her vision. But the object was all wrong. Not a ring at all, nothing but a worthless bauble.

  As Elohl held it in his palm, a searing sensation suddenly went through him, like the clockwork was burning. Lancing up his wrist and arm like fire ants, it drove through his body, knifing his heart. Elohl gave a violent tremor, nearly losing his grip upon the wall. His heart clenched hard, then beat frantically, racing. His hand spasmed into a fist around the clockwork. A blistering feeling like rage surged through him, coursing his veins, emanating from the object. But just as quickly as the feeling overpowered him, it fled, leaving him shaky and breathing hard upon the wall.

  And then, he felt the clockwork suddenly break in his fist.

  A soft cry escaped Elohl, the despair of a m
an with all the gods against him. Quickly, he opened his hand, but the damage was done. It was in pieces. Smoke was thick, more cocktails thrown at the wall below. Elohl was choking, his throat burning, his limbs shaky and weak from whatever the clockwork had done to him. A boot scrabbled for purchase to his right, beyond the flames. The men were still pursuing. Elohl stuffed the clockwork pieces into his belt pouch. Lifting his chin, he scented for the rift, smelling the night breeze where it sweetened to dawn outside beyond the smoke. Muscles of his lean torso and thighs bunching, Elohl hurried up, slithered through the crack, and was out upon the roof of the King’s palace in the grey-opal light.

  Doubling over, Elohl coughed hard, gasping for breath. Smoke choked him, his eyes watered. His limbs trembled, his breath a hard rasp from inhalation of burning vapors. Curses pursued him from the edge of the rift. Vaulting over boulders dislodged from the mountainside, Elohl hurried across the gabled palace roof. Suppressing his anguish for more immediate concerns of survival, he coughed hard as he ran to clear his lungs. He had to get back, had to return the item he'd found to Ghrenna. Perhaps her vision had changed in the hours he'd been away. Perhaps a new one had come to explain this unexpected turn.

  That one frantic thought was all he had to spur him on.

  Next to a grand dome, Elohl backed over toes first, finding handholds in the rough-hewn rock where the carving-out of the palace met the Kingsmount. It was hundreds of lengths to the ground from these upper tiers. Managing his breath and his shakiness, he made his way steadily down, letting his body guide him. A tingle in his left foot led him left, a pulse in his right foot led him back to the right, until he found a vertical crevasse that got him down to the grey paving stones behind a weaver’s shop.

  Dawn's thoughts blushed the eastern peaks of the Kingsmountains rich rose and gold. But the hopefulness of the lightening sky could not brighten Elohl's despairing heart.

  Elohl picked his feet up and ran, silence be damned.

  A dark-cowled shadow melted to his side, Elohl's twin sister Olea keeping easy pace as they streaked through the city. His twin was a soothing balm to his senses, bright patience entering Elohl's sphere like sunlight upon his torpid lake of emotions. Darting through narrow alleys and beneath awnings, Olea's shadowy form leaped stone benches with unsurpassable serenity. Longknives flashed in the blushing light, at perfect ease in her hands as she ran. A natural runner and fighter, Olea had talent at weapons to match their father. Elohl's twin was as fine as her blades, her slender height honed into effortless grace.

  “Did you get it? Was it there?” Never losing pace, Olea's breath was unruffled.

  “No.” Elohl did not break stride. “The box was there, but not the star-metal ring. These were there instead.”

  Ducking into a shadowed alley, seeping with the acrid tang of a tannery, Elohl halted, unbuckling his small leather pouch from his belt, handing it over. Opening it quickly, Olea's light-opal eyes narrowed to see his prize, her straight brows nearly forming a line in the wan light. She set her jaw, an uncommon scowl turning her lush lips down. Looking up suddenly like a deer on the run, she buckled the pouch to her own belt with fast fingers.

  “We'll discuss this later. Run. I can hear five men following. And… something else.”

  “Five? There were only two following me out the top of the cavern...” Elohl glanced back down the alley, but Olea's hearing was uncanny, keener than a wolfhound.

  “Trust me.” Olea’s wry smile attempted humor, but the tension around her lips betrayed her. She led as they ducked down the alley, vaulting crates at the end, back out into violet-hued streets where rough stone workshops and taverns had abandoned their spectral forms of night. A sensation of his world collapsing inward pressed Elohl, dread of this day. Cold terror caused a gripping tension in his throat, breaths unable to be taken. He unbuckled the collar of his jerkin and tugged his shirt lacings open to get air.

  The Inking upon the center of Elohl's chest, the black Kingsmount crowned with five stars, was just visible in the wan light. He rubbed the marking as he ran, the skin yet raw, inked just three days ago. Elohl didn’t deserve it. Neither he nor the rest of the Seventh Seals had earned it yet.

  They might be the last marks ever Inked upon any Kingsman or woman.

  Elohl’s heart sank as he skimmed over the paving stones. They raced under the Watercourse Gate, guards still slumped in shadows, sleeping soundly from the pith-crest Olea had slipped into their ale. Elohl was breathing hard as they sped out into the chatter of the Elhambrian Forest just wakening to dawn. But Olea was born to it, pushing into effortless speed. Retracing their way, they streaked through the forest to the wooded grotto, its moss-covered quiet burbling with a natural spring. In a group of boulders, Elohl could see the byrunstone portal through which they had come, the man-height Alranstone covered in its arcane swirls and glyphs with three eyes carven into it. The eye at the top began to open as Elohl approached, some ancient magic transforming the gray-blue byrunstone to a gleaming inset of lapis. Elohl splayed his hand towards its hinder-blue iris, yelling his name and family lineage as he ran.

  “Elohl den’Alrahel, den’Urloel, den’Alrashesh! Blessings to the Kingsmen! Blessings to the Alrashemni—”

  But before he could finish the words that would activate the Stone, Elohl suddenly felt something slide sideways into his mind. Not the rush and tingle of the Stone, this was something else, something he’d never felt. A smooth current slipped into him, arresting his mind like a tide’s flow takes a ship. It caught him, held him, causing the words of the incantation to fall from his lips as he stumbled to a halt right beside the Stone. Pulling at him, it caused him to turn like a nightmare and gaze toward the edge of the clearing.

  And there, in the grey hues of dawn, a behemoth stalked them down. Olea was looking, also, rigid, captivated beside Elohl. Held by the presence approaching them. The black monstrosity chittered as it came, its massive claws clacking like language, its segmented legs punching the moss. In the growing light, its chitinous plates glittered like stars in the heavens, or like diamonds, black and horrible but with an allure that arrested Elohl. The creature moved forward, tail arching over its broad back, ready to strike, its high barb shining in the first rays of the sun with a drop of poison.

  Towering over Elohl, towering even over the Stone in the grotto, it stalked near. And upon its high back rode a man. A man with hooded jerkin, gauntlets, and greaves in a herringbone weave with metal studs, their leather so black it ate the sun’s rays that threaded through the treetops. His face hidden in his black hood, he maneuvered his steed forward with only a touch of his hands gliding over its chitin, riding it bareback with neither saddle nor harness. An enormous longsword with a black-wrapped handle rode his back, undrawn. The man stared Elohl down, silent, his dark eyes barely visible in the shadows of his hood. The sliding sensation in Elohl’s mind swept him suddenly, rolling him in a massive wave.

  His mind collapsed. He collapsed, one knee driving hard into the earth, his hand upon the Alranstone to steady himself from falling over completely. Olea fell to her hands and knees at his side with a sharp cry. Horror swept Elohl, fear, bleeding through his mind. He could feel it covering him, choking him, blanketing him like soft linen shrouds. And as he watched, captivated, frozen, he saw the man smile, deep within his hood.

  And suddenly, Elohl felt the slipping inside his mind form speech. I can’t let you leave, boy. Not with what you may have seen tonight. Open for me. Open your mind. Spill for me what you saw of the plan… what you heard…

  The sliding sensation slammed into Elohl, like a tidal wave hitting a jetty. Elohl felt his mind crumble, opening, starting to give up everything he had seen tonight, everything he’d endured. Desperation wracked him, his mind nearly obliterated. Frantic.

  But suddenly, a surge went through him. From his hand yet upon the Stone, a presence went humming through Elohl’s body like the drone of a thousand bees. The Stone’s massive eye came fully open, floodin
g the glade with bright blue light. Words surfaced in Elohl, surging up on the wings of that droning, thrust into the front of his mind. The final words of the incantation. Using the last of his trembling strength, Elohl trapped Olea’s hand beneath his in the dirt, and screamed out, “Open, Stone of Alran, pass me free!”

  The Alranstone paused. A moment of shuddering terror gripped Elohl, feeling his mind break, feeling himself being shredded open for the man upon the scorpion. The man’s face contorted in fury. He vaulted from his beast, drawing that massive sword one-handed, his gaze sharpening, commanding from the depths of his hood. Elohl’s heart compressed in an aching thud. His body trembled like a populus leaf in high winds and he screamed as his mind was ripped open for the man in the herringbone leathers.

  But suddenly, a warming glow filled him. The blue light that flooded the glade dimmed, as if the Alranstone had blinked in permission. The man in the black hood lunged with a roar, his sword swiping down to cut Elohl’s arm from his shoulder, to sever Elohl from the Stone. But he was too late. In a clap of thunder and a flash that left bright spots behind his eyelids, Elohl and Olea were threaded into the Stone’s core, torn away from the breaking of their minds, and into a new kind of agony. In a space that held an eternity of moments, Elohl writhed in pain. Innards wrapping through themselves with a searing wrench, his body twisted into a mobius. Sunbursts flared before his eyes. A smell like salt tears and detritus filled his nose. Emptiness filled his lungs in the place of air. Buffeting pounded his ears like being rolled beneath ocean waves, drowning. But before he could focus upon any one of these things enough to scream, they were spat out upon the other side, without a care to their flesh.

  Elohl and Olea den'Alrahel stumbled to their knees in the high grass of a clearing far from Lintesh, breathless and retching.

  CHAPTER 1 – ELOHL